Disclaimer: I wrote this in July of this year, and was nervous to post it until now, reviewing my writing for the year. I decided it's worth sharing even with the somewhat acidic tone. With tenderness in my heart for my longing lady friends, if you find this one close to home, take a breath, be willing to laugh a little at your own culture and community, and discern wheat from chaff for yourself as needed :)

Every self-proclaimed ‘awakened woman’ I know spends half her time at home alone lighting incense at her altar and ‘calling in the one’. She and her awakened girlfriends talk over Kombucha and raw chocolate about why it’s hard to find an awakened man: there are so few; women are just further ahead; many awakened men are too freedom-oriented to commit; she won’t settle for less; she knows he’s out there; she’s happy alone and doesn’t need a man to fulfill her (though of course this claim is suspect given the focus of her daily manifestation rituals).

She also loves to write articles about it, I’ve noticed in my recent Facebook feed. Articles calling men to have the courage to receive a wild awakened woman. Articles calling women not to settle for less than the perfect awakened man, and inviting other yearning feminine hearts to dream into the idealized New Age Adonis with her. Articles solidifying the increasingly ritualized fantasy of Californicated notions of what it is to be good: Must have aligned chakras, spirit animals, meditation practice, Life Purpose, tantric sex, and walk often in the literal and metaphorical wilderness. Must do all this and also somehow earn a good living in this capitalist culture so she can ‘manifest’ sheepskin temple blankets, hand-made crystal-activated Burning Man outfits, and other shockingly expensive spiritual bling. Because we awakened women deserve to have what we want, and how we express the divine must be in line with the latest material forms of prayer.

We call demanding all these things at once empowerment - the nature of a wild awakened woman. However, I have come to call it something simpler, from the old vernacular of pre-new age cult indoctrination: misguided.

Two things madden me about these increasingly popular articles and the strengthening wave of cultural assumptions behind them. First, they perpetuate the Western Disney love story fantasy disguised as something more righteous than a simple longing for love. Oh mysterious wild women of the festival scene, despite your adult lifestyle choices - many of which I whole-heartedly respect - most of you grew up in suburban homes in America. You know who Ariel, Bell, Elsa, Sleeping Beauty, and Jasmine are, you know their love songs by heart, and you have those imprints of Prince Charming from a very young age pulsing in your awakening bones.

There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this, but please just call a spade a spade. You’re merely putting Prince Charming in a steampunk leather vest with a sacred geometry tattoo on his chi gong buffened chest. Just please acknowledge more honestly that despite all your empowerment and appreciation of solitude, which is fantastic, you still want him to rescue you from your wild awakened loneliness so you can follow your primal human instincts to love and be loved, give birth, and be cared for. This is human, mama, and it’s okay. Own it.

Second, and more disturbingly, these articles to me highlight the crystallization of a new cycle of spiritual dogma and social hierarchy that is hardening the mystical into the religious before our eyes. And we know from history where this goes. Remember Jesus, and Saint Francis? Remember the simple messages they preached, the simple lives of direct relationship with God that they practiced? Now think of a modern Catholic Mass: the giant ornately decorated and expensive building we call a church; the priests and all that come with that patriarchal institutional role; the layers of dull ritual and misinterpreted words all too often disconnected from their original intent, leading back from that historic awakened man, his words, his woman, their disciples. And the bling - the rosaries, gold crosses on the altar, votive candles, marble statues of Mary and priest robes made of silk.

There is much beauty in all this ritual and institution, of course. I just spent a week in Eastern Europe, visiting many Catholic churches, and my heart and spirit were opened by the power of these places and the deep institutional container of the Church.

But it’s an artfully crafted cage for a butterfly. And it has contributed to a lot of pain, distortion, and unawakened behavior over the centuries. When I read these articles invoking the perfect awakened mate, I can’t help but notice how many of the criteria for the awakened man are more clothing than essence. And that includes the ones that, in the waters we seekers tend to swim in, we assume to be essence.

For example: turns out a man does not actually need to have a formal meditation practice to have cultivated the depths of compassion and presence you are seeking through that signal. Try looking for a man who's committed to a craft - any craft - and you'll find the same benefits. Here's another favorite I hear a lot: woman wants man who is not afraid of her wild feminine. It's true, a lot of men out there are uncomfortable with emotion and 'irrational' behavior to the point of not being worth your time. (And this includes many of those beloved meditators first drawn to that practice as a form of escape.) But it's also true that we awakened women, in our less than awake moments, often use the wild femine thing as an excuse to be totally bitchy and inconsiderate to those we love. I find a man who draws lines and helps me understand the bounds of my own behavior a lot sexier and awakened than one who lets me walk all over him with my 'wildness' because that's the latest over-generalized criteria for what it means to be a man. (To all the men I've done this to: I'm sorry.)

I could go on, but that's part of the problem. After many years of swimming in the seductive waters of West Coast spiritual culture, and stepping away long enough to be able to discern the butterfly from the cage, I can’t help but say: it now seems a lot simpler than all that. And it’s not that different from the love stories and great teachings and piano duets we grew up with: Heart and Soul. That’s it. End of story.

And beginning.

While visiting these churches in Europe, I had a man at my side. A man I met at a good old midwestern wedding during my hiatus from new age culture, and my hiatus from seeking a partner (ain’t that always the way). He speaks another language, which I have been bumblingly learning on this trip. We joke that he too is learning another language to make sense of all the spiritual jargon I use as a result of my long immersion in new age culture.

My man watches and waits with love, if not understanding, as I do my weird witchy prayers at various sacred sites and chapels (without, I might add, the identifying attire). When he looks at me with those blue loving eyes, yes, like you call for, everything melts. In his arms the world dissolves into a soft, warm, golden pulse. The experience of this loving touches and opens and amazes me every day. I would like for all of us to get to experience this elixir of peace. May all beings be happy.

But he is not ‘awakened’, by your standards. He is not present in the depths of his masculine essence 24/7, and he doesn’t have a big idea about his life purpose. He checks Facebook and Reddit a lot and has never attended a Deida workshop or danced naked at sunrise on the playa. Tantra is a foreign concept, he isn’t in tune with his 3rd eye, has never seen a shaman or channeled his spirit animal and sometimes dresses like Mr. Rogers. And it turns out in the end that I could care less. Because he loves and receives my love with a willingness and courage that, quite literally, obliterates any other idealized and materialized criteria.

I have been with men, wonderful men, who have all of your awakened criteria in spades. Except one: a heart that is willing to open with mine. And ladies, let me tell you: if you’re willing to take off those last layers of spiritual robes and stand naked in the truth of what really matters when it comes to love, I swear to you, that one thing is all you really need to pray for. Your prince charming doesn’t need a Raven flying at his shoulder. He doesn’t need to follow The Way of the Superior Man. He doesn’t really even need to be awake. He just needs to love you with all the heart he has access to. And you the same. Raw, wild beauty will unfold from there. The rest, my friends, is just packaging.

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